Exposure Management

Exposure management (EM) is a program based upon a set of processes and capabilities that allow enterprises to evaluate the visibility, accessibility, and vulnerability of their digital assets continually and consistently.

EM is delivered using five stages: scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization. An EM program leverages tools to inventory assets and vulnerabilities, simulate or test attacks, and other forms of security assessment process and technologies.

Security professionals responsible for managing risk have traditionally looked at vulnerability scanning and security controls to identify the level of exposure infrastructure is subjected to. The effort and diversity of potential issues can lead to conflicting priorities. And managing and monitoring discrete products and tools can lead to what is known as dashboard fatigue.

Exposure management is necessary to govern and prioritize risk reduction. It conducts three types of activities:

  • Identify the likelihood of exploitation based upon visibility on an attack surface
  • Inventory and categorize the exposure (vulnerability, threat intelligence, digital assets)
  • Validate whether attacks will be successful and security controls can assist with detecting or preventing them

Ridge Security exposure management support

As part of an integrated exposure management program, Ridge Security’s RidgeBot® enables organizations to frequently and consistently test their infrastructure, applications, and defenses to find and mitigate weaknesses, gaps and operational deficiencies faster. RidgeBots act like human attackers using sophisticated exploits. RidgeBots relentlessly locate exploits across an enterprise network, document their findings, continuously measure results and effectiveness, and verify vulnerabilities.

RidgeBot enables organizations to conduct automated pentesting from an attacker’s point of view. Before exposures are put into production, RidgeBot finds, assesses, prioritizes, and fixes a wide set of exposures before bad actors get to them. The resulting validation allows organizations to see what would happen in the event of an attack, how their defenses would cope, and how well the processes would perform.

Vulnerability assessment (VA) solutions operate across on-premises, cloud, and virtual environments to help reduce risk exposure. They discover, identify and report on operating system and software vulnerabilities for IT, cloud, IoT and OT devices.

Many organizations are implementing VA solutions to better understand, prioritize and reduce risk and exposure from threats. VA establishes a baseline of connected assets and vulnerabilities, identifying and reporting on the security configuration of assets. VA supports compliance reporting and control frameworks, risk assessment and remediation prioritization, and remediation activities.

A foundational component of the vulnerability management process, VA supports security management, proactive prevention of threats and conformity with regulations and compliance regimes. Vulnerability assessment is a key process in understanding and dealing with an organization’s attack surfaces that can be exposed to threat actors, helping to reduce risk.

Many regulations and standards, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 require organizations to perform VAs to remain in compliance.

Advancements and innovations for VA tools and services are being seen in discovery, prioritization and mitigation, tracking the vulnerability remediation progress and workflow automation to meet evolving requirements and needs. This includes areas like cloud, containers, OT and vulnerability prioritization.

Ridge Security vulnerability assessment support

As part of an integrated vulnerability assessment, Ridge Security’s RidgeBot® enables organizations to not only assess but also validate vulnerabilities discovered in their infrastructure, applications, and defenses. RidgeBots relentlessly locate exploits across an enterprise network, document their findings, continuously measure results and effectiveness, and verify vulnerabilities.

RidgeBot enables organizations to conduct automated pentesting from an attacker’s point of view. Before exposures are put into production, RidgeBot finds, assesses, prioritizes, and fixes a wide set of exposures before bad actors get to them. The resulting validation allows organizations to see what would happen in the event of an attack, how their defenses would cope, and how well the processes would perform.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for PCI DSS.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for GDPR.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for HIPPAA.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for ISO 27001